love, critters, and halloween

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repairing stuff with stuff

So there’s a prop that was donated to me and that I love dearly…but it needed some help. The prop (which I’ve renamed So Big) had been left outside a lot, and his paint was pretty peely. But more importantly, he’d lost a few fingers over the years. He was used, regardless, but those lost digits have bothered me (and, assumedly, him!) for a long time, so I was eager to try to fix him up.

Poor little paw!

A Generous Benefactor threw some scrap bits of unusable-to-him foam bits into a box of props we purchased from him last summer. At the time, I really wasn’t sure what use we could possibly have for some cast-off fingers and teeth. Oh, me of little faith! Those bits have been wicked useful this season.

Gorilla Glue is a girl’s best friend.

I used a Dremel to thin out the knuckle areas of two of these fingers and popped them on the end of So Big’s paw. Even without paint, it wasn’t a bad match!

Sure, the finger nails are very different, but…honestly? It was all a much better match than I’d hoped. I then took both hands and chipped off all the loose flaky paint while So Big sat off to side, watching in horrified silence..

“My hands, my haaaaaands!!!”

So Big had been wearing a…well, a kinda horrible scrappy white shroud. I washed it, but it had definitely seen better days. We ended up throwing the pathetic thing away. I then painted both hands black, to give them a fresh sort of start, followed by some dry brushing to try to catch the details of the hand sculpts.

That..probably shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. But So Big was delighted.

“SQUEE!”

Next, we hung him up on a wall so that he could be properly redressed. Reborn, he will be living in our haunt’s crypt area this year, and I’m pretty dang delighted.